From the Verdi’s compositional call to arms to the visual commentary of Gordon Bennett, art has always played an important role in political change. It captures and reports inequities and can galvanise public energy in a way that evades the written work of the statistician, however elegant their data may be presented.

Art is also deeply affected by political decisions. In Australia, many small arts organisations are still reeling from recent government funding changes. In higher and vocational education, political determinations of which courses, scholarships and research projects are worthy of national support are reshaping how creative art is taught and studied. This edition of NiTRO will consider the role and responses of creative arts disciplines to the political landscape and the influence that political decisions have upon tertiary arts education.

Editorial

In this edition of NiTRO our contributors consider the contemporary relationship between tertiary art and politics from the perspective of the role of art to engage with the political message, but also to explore how the political message, and political decisions that affect arts and education, are influencing tertiary arts.

Only the paranoid survive, so says William Burroughs. Similarly, as they say, you don’t have to be paranoid to think they are out to get you!

It is not hard to feel a sinister force at work as the collateral damage and excesses of global capital slices through the social fabric of nations, and produces increasing social and economic divisions through polarising economic wellbeing of the world’s citizens.

DDCA Conference 2017

The DDCA’s 2017 conference took place at the Victorian College of the Arts during Melbourne’s recent respite from the cold weather - quite disconcerting for those of us from ‘up north’ who had dressed for the ‘polar extremes’ of our southern states. In a program designed to prompt discussion we welcomed a wide range of artists from within, and outside, academiato consider the theme ‘Beyond Research: Creative Arts in the Impact, Engagement and Innovative Agenda’.

Featured Articles

Professor Gary Foley was a key member of the Aboriginal Black Power Movement and a critical figure in establishing the Aboriginal Embassy protest of 1972. He has been at the centre of major political activities in Australia for more than 45 years. In 2011 and 2012 he created and performed his one man show Foley with Ilbijerri Theatre, Jon Hawkes and Edwina Howell, for the Melbourne Arts Festival and the Sydney Festival. In 2015 he was the recipient of the Australia Council’s Red Ochre Award for a lifetime achievement in the Arts. Dr Edwina Howell has worked with Professor Foley since 2007. In this interview for NiTRO she draws out Professor Foley’s long connection with creative practice as a mechanism to bring public attention to the political challenges facing Aboriginal people in Australia.

The contemporary world faces an array of inter-connected daunting challenges - geopolitical, enviro-climatic, economic-developmental. While science and technology address many of them, their agenda is only half the story.

A bleaker aspect of writing for an intellectually self-conscious publication like NiTRO is the obligation to respond rationally to what are, in the end, irrational points of view. As the political Right dissolves into its constituent pathologies, its policies transmogrify into a mix of prejudice and panic. . . This injects an air of unreality into the policy-making process. “Data” is obsessively gathered, but selectively deployed. Some areas of government expenditure must repeatedly account for their “impact”. Others are judged of self-evident merit and anything that contradicts this is downplayed or ignored.

There is a growing sense that something is happening in the arts and creative sector. The sector is finding its collective voice at state, national and regional level, with terms such as ‘artist-led’, ‘artist-driven’, ‘sector-driven’ being used in the development of programs and policy. This visibility and attention to the arts and contribution of such to the sector does not appear to be similarly matched in education and learning realms.

A contingent part of the creative economy, tertiary creative arts education has a responsibility to its community of students, alumni and partners, to the broader arts sector and the political landscape that surrounds it. We are therefore subject not just to the politics of cultural policy pertaining to the arts, which affect the forms of support and types of arts forms and practices we include on our curricula, but to education and economic policies which shape the conditions under which we teach and undertake research.

The gradual shift from social democracy to neoliberalism in the west since the 1980s has significantly affected the apparatus of higher education. University and college heads have shifted their priorities from developing knowledge through education and research for social benefit, to increasing the wealth of the institution (and their own salaries) through competing for student numbers and positions in league tables.

In August 2017, I curated a week-long festival at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Seymour Centre, University of Sydney, entitled “Out of the Shadows: rediscovering Jewish music and theatre”. This was the fourth of five festivals staged around the world, part of a large research project called Performing the Jewish Archive, funded by the British Arts & Humanities Research Council. Together with ten colleagues from three other continents, the research focus was the aesthetic creations of Jewish artists in the 20th century, artists who were affected by persecution, flight and internment.

Academics convinced of the folly of user pays systems of education have long complained about the steady decline of equity resulting from the ratchetting effect applied to the HECS scheme since its introduction. This is compounded by the attendant impact on quality as each school and program must approach revenue neutrality through a combination of fees and research income.

Why Subscribe?

Creative arts disciplines make up a significant component of the university staff and student population, yet we lack a vehicle to share common experiences and issues.

NiTROprovides a platform for creative artists practicing in academia to contribute to informed discussion about issues and activities relating to practice, research and teaching taking place within the university sector.

With details of events, conferences, research resources, and articles from guest contributors and creative artists working in DDCA member institutions, subscribing to NiTRO keeps you up to date with the what, why and when of university based creative arts.

Subscription is free and open to artists, educators, policymakers, and anyone interested in creative arts research and tertiary education.

Why Do We Ask These Questions?

There is no accurate information collected on the number or type of artists practicing in the university sector. To help DDCA to collect this data and ensure that our site reflects our audience, we ask subscribers to complete five questions at registration. This information will be used by DDCA only to indicate categories of subscribers. No individual data will be used or shared with third parties.